A Builder and a Painter: DIY Garbage Shed and a Painted Table

I’ve been a builder and a painter recently. More building than painting, but still… I’m working down the list!  First… the building. A shed for our trash cans.

I should start by saying that with every building project I take on, I am glad that I enjoyed high school math as much as I did! Inevitably, I have screw ups and go through more lumber than necessary, but I’m getting better and better and anticipating the quirky parts of any build.

This trash can shed was a lot, but I think it came together… the front doors are a little out of whack, but after checking and double checking my angles, I think that has more to do with the grade on which they sit than anything else. At least that’s what I’ll tell myself!

The shed is against the house so the trashcans are much closer and obviously MUCH more discreet. For the FULL material list and step-by-step instructions, head over to eHow for my tutorial.

Want to know what I painted? Nothing fancy, but… another example of how a dreary old piece of furniture can get a fun upgrade thanks to a little elbow grease.  When we moved into this house, we needed a table that would fit in our kitchen. For $70, we brought home this oval lovely. It has an extra leaf and fits all the kids.

I knew it had potential when I bought it, but I wasn’t sure which way I’d go with it… either strip it down entirely OR paint it. The kids are hard on our table… lots of painting and play dough and spilling and scrubbing. For that reason, I decided to paint, paint, paint.

In my head, I had visions of a super bright blue table in the kitchen. But then I started pulling paint samples that I was interested in and none of them quite worked. Turns out, the blues we have going on in the adjacent family room have more purple than I would have thought. The eye can play tricks with you!

I matched the middle blue in these ikat chairs and it works great. It’s not the vivid POP of color that I’d envisioned but I have plans for the green floor so hopefully the blue will stand out a bit more in the future! Again… for a full tutorial on HOW I pulled this off, head over to eHow for the step by step!

Wanna see other things I’ve done over at eHow? Those are here!

I’d love you to Pin either of these projects by hovering over and clicking that little “Pin It” button here—>

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